Recently, an old video with a fragment of an interview with the boss of Valve has gone viral again in the gaming community.
Gabe Newell then spoke on the topic of combating piracy:
The reason we think we don't have a problem with piracy is because there are misconceptions in the industry about what "piracy" even is. There is an opinion: piracy is when people want to steal something from you. They don't want to pay money and just want to get your content. However, if you look closely, you can see that these people have computers for $2,000 and they spend $50 a month or more on the Internet - it becomes clear that they are generally willing to spend money.
The boss of Valve noted that "piracy" is a matter of service, and also spoke about his experience working with the Russian market, which some mistakenly consider hopeless due to the large number of "pirates":
We have increasingly noticed that "piracy" is a consequence of poor service from game companies. If [I were a player from Russia and} I wanted a product, but didn't want to wait six months to get it and for it to be in Russian, I would have to turn to pirates simply because I couldn't get it any other way. And as soon as the product became available simultaneously with its release in Australia, Great Britain or the USA, and appeared with Russian localization, our problems with piracy in Russia disappeared.
According to Gabe, companies need to focus on the client and do useful things for him - in this case, "piracy" ceases to be a problem.